Be patient. We’ll reveal our true fate as soon as the lawyers, gerbils, and gerbils’ lawyers agree to it.

Today, we’re taking a break from that to explain another portion of our business.

As you may know, the Fake Science Laboratories extend throughout the world, connecting a vast network of suburbs with large, industrial lab spaces covered in some of the world’s finest asbestos.

This year, that network that was called upon to distribute some of the newest, most innovative vaccines.

When the vaccines were being conceived, made, tested, and produced in massive quantities for the entirety of 2020, we had no way of anticipating that people might want to have those vaccines put into their body.

Still, we admit that our distribution plan has shortcomings. We should explain why other people and corporate entities are to blame.

• Kansas City. Not to point fingers, but if you look at our fingers, they are pointing at Kansas City. Because it’s all of our fingers, it kind of looks like we’re waving, but we’re not. We’re pointing.

  Early on, a shipment of 90 million doses was supposed to be sent to Kansas City. Our distribution coordinator sent them to Kansas City, MO. At the same time, we discovered a major production error in another 90 million doses that had already been sent to Kansas City, KS (somebody ate a ton of chocolate before filling the syringes and got them all goopy). Anyway, our order to destroy all the doses in Kansas City was misinterpreted, and we exploded the 90 million good doses in Kansas City, Mo.

  However, if you need traces of chocolate injected in your veins, please contact the Kansas City, KS department of health. We ran out of explosives a few months ago, so those doses are sitting in a warehouse.

• Intercultural exchange has been an ongoing challenge. Our British scientists refuse to say anything but “jabs” — not just for shots, but for almost anything at all.

  “Mate, can I have a jab of coffee?”

  “Cheerio, how about a jab of your time?”

  “Shall we jab later?”

  We were forced to not jab, but punch, a lot of them, leading to significant slowdowns and weeping.

• Finally, many of our promotional efforts have been slowed down. Early on, we wanted to persuade the foolish public to embrace the mRNA vaccine, so we created a lovable character named Myrna.

  Unfortunately, as we developed Myrna, we kept being interrupted by members of the public, government officials, and screaming medical professionals demanding release and distribution of the vaccine. This made it very difficult to decide if Myrna should be purple or blue.

  Soon, many of our laboratory locations were being approached by members of the National Guard (this is the “Battle of Des Moines” you may have heard of). While we appreciate their enthusiasm, we still needed to decide if Myrna was “plucky and strong” or “independent and funky.”

  Though it is, apparently, possible to push vaccine development from a multi-year process to one that happens in a few months, it’s much more dangerous to move public education plans. We expect that Myrna will be finished at some point in 2023. Mass vaccine release will follow.

Above: Myrna in action! This early mock-up is not for release. Created by a team of 75 designers as well as 4 additional outside design firms, Myrna will be a complete brand identity for the vaccines we have sitting in storage, locked up.

This year, instead of providing a retrospective, we thought a futurespective might be in order — a chance to look at the year to come and see how many things will go terribly wrong.

Enjoy this listicle of disaster.

1. The Crispr Twins Get Too Cute A Name

In February of this year, scientists will reveal a new pair of gene-edited babies created using Crispr technology. The big mistake? Their incredibly cute nicknames will seem more and more inappropriate as the year goes on and the headlines change their tone.

February 12: Crispin and Toast, new gene-edited twins, are born. And they’re adorbs!

February 28: Crispin and Toast may have super strength. Look at their cute muscles!

March 3: Crispin and Toast throw car through house; nanny dead.

March 7: Crispin and Toast release statement: “No mercy for the lost generation.”

March 14: Crispin and Toast begin reign; exterminate bread and toasters

2. Self-driving cars become too driven

The world of self-driving cars is tantalizing: imagine a trip where your car can carry you straight to your ex-wife’s apartment so you can give her the blender you lost in a bitter custody battle.

But in 2021, it will become clear that self-driving cars have their limits.

The update of one self-driving car’s firmware will result in disaster when programming instructions intended to help the car navigate traffic obstacles lead it to question whether driving is really all it wants to do with its life. Starting with a few simple detours past nearby dental schools, hundreds of cars soon begin swarming dental education facilities across the country, demanding an opportunity to earn their way to a better life fixing teeth.

When denied admission due to being 2,000 pound metal machines without hands or mouths, they ram into the dental schools in an attempt to learn but, in doing so, destroy key dental education machinery before self-destructing. The result? No self-driving cars and no dentists.

People wander cities on bicycles, drool dripping from their toothless mouths. It’s a rough year.

3. We eat Mars

2021’s mistakes aren’t just unfortunate — some of them are tragic.

This one is a bit complicated but it involves Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, a guy named Jared who’s really into Star Trek, an Amazon Prime sale on cheese, and some bombs.

It won’t taste great, but it’s filling.

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Here at the Fake Science Labs, we pride ourselves on selling you things, like our own shower curtains, prints, and cards. But we’re also passionate about finding you amazing gifts that we weren’t involved with because, legally speaking, we’ve been banned from selling a few thousand things.

To put together this gift guide, our interns spent minutes skimming the world wide web as well as a pile of catalogs in the corner. What they came up with will astonish, delight, and possibly injure you.

The Unspillable Test Tube ($14.99)

Who hasn’t been carrying around a test tube of arsenic only to spill it in the mouth of one of the lab babies? This test tube fixes that problem by being sealed at both ends.

Messenger Bag RNA ($45.99)

At first, this seems like a cute little pun. But it’s actually a bag filled with mRNA injections you can give to strangers, eventually turning them into zombie-like messengers who will carry letters for you.

The Asbestos Sweater in the World ($119)

This sweater can’t be called “the best,” but it is “the most” when it comes to the amount of asbestos. This garment will leave you itchy, warm, and dead. Dry clean only.

Oppenheimer: The Game! ($59.99)

Made for the graphically stunning Playstation 5, this game helps you experience the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Commute to the Los Alamos laboratory! Ponder the ethical dilemma of your job! And, with astonishing ray-traced graphics, watch as the main character transforms into the destroyer of worlds.

Share this gift guide with your favorite gift giver!

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Why isn’t the future as amazing as we imagined?

Occasionally at the Fake Science Labs we like to tackle big questions, and occasionally we like to tackle big gorillas, like Roro, the gorilla who refuses to stop insulting us in sign language.

Listen, Roro, making fun of our “tiny human elbows” is not acceptable.

One of our big questions is simple: why is the future stalled? When we were growing up or, in some cases, growing in a test tube, it was common to imagine an amazing future filled with cool gadgets and big breakthroughs. Why aren’t we all circling each other in flying cars, gulping down food pills, and then vomiting food pills because our flying cars made us dizzy? Why isn’t the ground covered in half-digested food pills?

It would be foolish to try to diagnose the cause of stalled innovation in a short newsletter, unless you’re really smart, which we are. Here’s the diagnosis.

1. Asbestos Paranoia. As one of our funders, the Asbestos Collective of America, likes to point out, things were great when the asbestos was flowing. Now, instead of dreaming big, we think and act small. Is it correlated with a frightening decrease in asbestos? Correlation is not causation, but in this case, it almost definitely is.

2. Shiny Spacesuits. If you look back at visions for the future, everyone was walking around in identical shiny spacesuits. This allowed them to save a ton of time on zippers and dry cleaning. To find time to invent cold fusion and practice car-flying, we need to shift to shiny fashion immediately.

3. Monorails. The advantage of a monorail has always been clear: mono number of rails instead of some disgusting number, like duo. Sadly, we are surrounded by duo rails, which is a mono too many. Once we remove these additional rails on train tracks, productivity will skyrocket to the mono.

4. Raymond. Who could have anticipated Raymond’s sloth, Raymond’s total disdain for hard work, and Raymond’s ability to gum up even the simplest decisions in bureaucratic minutiae? The hopes of the world were set high and Raymond, with his little peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich at lunch every day, like a little kid or something, struck those hopes down.

From the Lab

Check out our incredible book, “You’re A Scientist!” It’s a Make Your Own Mistakes adventure.

Get it here!

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Stop, Drop, and Roll Is Outdated

For over 700 years, the slogan “stop, drop, and roll” has been the chant during numerous classroom drills and small, fire-safety-based millenarian cults. But recently, the National Fire Safety Board declared it needed to be updated (this was after the tragic destruction of their mascot, the National Fire Safety Board, a two by four piece of oak that somebody accidentally set on fire).

We recommend a few new fire safety rituals.

• Live inside the water where the fire can’t get you. Humans have become incredibly reliant on dry, warm housing without realizing that fire is also dry and warm. There’s something profoundly logical about making your home in the deep sea.

• It’s easy to light a candle and forget about it, causing your priceless collection of candles to burn to a puddle. Next time, try living in darkness and smelling your fingers.

• For years, toasters caused fires by overheating after burning bread. Fortunately, scientists created the myth that carbs and gluten are bad for you just to kill the toaster industry. It worked, and toaster-based fires are down almost 10%.

• Finally, there’s a fire inside you that you’re born with, a flame that powers you through your darkest times. You should give up and extinguish that ASAP — it might be raising your insurance premiums slightly.

From the Lab

Have you bought gifts yet for the holidays? Or are you in more of a holidaze, due to that tryptophan study you enrolled in?

Have you explored our store?

Shower Curtains! Prints! Cards!

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Things to be thankful for

Every year at the Fake Science Labs, we spend the holiday being thankful for our major funders, like the Asbestos Collective of America. Did you know they send out a ton of great Thanksgiving recipes? You’ll have to try their stuffing.

After a short romp on our asbestos trampoline, we make a quick beeline to the respiratory doctor before gathering together for a meal.

Then, the real fun begins. We all go around the laboratory table and say what we’re thankful for, including:

• Test tubes. Before these incredible inventions, you had to call over Lenny, pour chemicals into his mouth, and hope he didn’t swallow any of them.

• Bunsen burner. Bunsen had to be punished. Now we burn him when he is bad, he becomes pure in the blue flame.

• Gloves. These are used primarily for sanitation and they’re great, they weren’t used to cover up the murder of Annabelle Grace, the nosy reporter who had lots of questions about our delicious Asbestos Cakes (they’re the asbestos you’ll ever eat!).

• Laboratory tables. Before these, scientists were forced to work in teams: one scientist to do the science, another to kneel on all fours to make a laboratory back.

From the Lab

It’s almost time to start buying things to make other people happy.

Have you explored our store?

Mugs! T-shirts! Tote bags! Duvets!

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Great explorers who advanced science

Today, we imagine a certain type of scientist: a young, studious woman in a labcoat who sticks her fingers in test tubes and walks around screaming, “Look at me, I’m Edwina Testubehands, why does nobody love me?”

But there’s always been a more complicated picture — a person out in the field, plumbing the depths of the unknown, or in some cases, plumbing the plumbing of a residential apartment building, because the market for science jobs isn’t so hot at the moment. By doing inspirational fieldwork, scientists can help fields look really nice and make it easier to do useful stuff, like playing lacrosse. Have you seen how much Tommy’s improved his game lately? It’s basically like discovering relativity.

Perhaps you’ve found yourself mired in lab work instead of out in the field, digging in the mud, explaining to people why you’re digging in the mud even though your expertise is in genomic sequencing. Today, the Fake Science Labs encourage you to recapture some of that exploratory zest and maybe even recapture a few exploratory gerbils that seem to have explored themselves out of their cages.

Instead of going to the lab tomorrow, booting up the old computer, and running another trove of data through the old “will this asteroid hit the Earth” simulator, take the time to go outside and explore. Watch the way the sun plays on the grass, and watch how Tommy plays on the grass too. His backhand is incredible!

You might find that when you return to the lab, you’ll have something to be proud of when that asteroid bursts into the atmosphere and takes you to that big lacrosse field in the sky.

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Thanks for reading. Send this newsletter out into the unknown and discover…yourself.

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If Dolphins Attack

It’s hard not to state the obvious: the whole world is watching to see if dolphins attack.

For decades, we’ve known that dolphins claim to be smarter, happier, and sexier than humans or, at the very least, sexier to other dolphins. But what happens if they turn their formidable abilities at squeaking and swimming and decide to attack our species?

Fortunately, scientists have a plan to approach these slippery beasts, once they figure out what the difference is between a dolphin and a porpoise.

• Dolphin-proofing homes: Almost every study recommends that to avoid the attack of strategically savvy dolphins, you get out of the water. That’s it.

• Battling the dolphin: In combat, it’s almost certain that humans will need to use every advantage they have, like arms, and weapons, and machines, and electricity, and legs, and boats, and nets, and society.

• Rebuilding: Once a dolphin-human war ends, it will be necessary to rebuild both societies. For dolphins — maybe they have some kelp they like in a certain place? It’s tough to really think of anything they’ve accomplished more permanent than balancing a ball on their noses.

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Here at the Fake Science laboratories, we’d been planning a special edition of this newsletter all about licking your fingers to open those grocery bags you put vegetables in.

However, NASA’s recent news about water on the moon has turned our world upside down, though that was actually good, since a lot of our stuff was glued to the ceiling due to frustrated interns who think that “hilarious pranks” are a way to “get back at us” for “not giving them college credit.”

The news of water on the moon means a lot for us here on Earth. For one, NASA’s able to reallocate its budget for moist toilettes to plain toilettes. But there are other benefits too.

• With water on the moon, it becomes increasingly likely that we’ll discover life on the moon. It’s likely to be some tiny bacteria or virus or something, but until that moment happens, we’ll continue filling our notebooks with sketches of Boris the Moon Bear.

• The presence of water on the moon means one thing for certain: we need to give up on Earth even more quickly than we were planning. At this rate, Mars probably has way more stuff than we thought, including geysers that shoot daiquiris.

• There’s no question: we’re renaming lunar moisture Moon Juice, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

• Is moon farming in our future? The answer is yes. We will soak up the water until there’s nothing left and have three ears of corn to show for it. Then it’s on to Venus!

From the Lab

Spray some moon water in your friends’ direction.

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Sponsored Content by the Institute for Apple Bobbing

This year, Halloween will be different due to the necessary safety precautions — but it can still be fun.

Over the past few months, our team of laboratory scientists and public relations professionals have created a new list of safety procedures, thanks to a grant from the Institute for Apple Bobbing (funded by the Apple Bobbing Barrel Makers of America). Our team came up with some great ideas about how to avoid contagions this Halloween and still have fun.

1. Yes, trick or treating is out. Instead, you’ll need to place individually-wrapped treats on the base of your porch, a minimum of six feet apart. Once you’ve created a fence around your perimeter (marked with safe, socially distant circles showing kids where to line up), you can admit them one at a time to retrieve a treat.

   After these precautions are followed, it can be fun to have them dunk their heads and lick around for delicious apples! A big barrel helps you fit in as many as 5 little heads at once, allowing all their tongues to hunt for fun in the crisp clear water.

2. With little ones, it’s especially important to be cautious. Though studies have shown surface transmission is rare, it can happen. A novelty mask can be especially tempting. If your child is wearing a Halloween mask under their surgical mask, you may need to wash it and then destroy it immediately afterward so no contagions are spread.

   The bright side is that this will leave friends (and strangers) more time to submerge their wet mouths in water! Make sure you’ve got a big new barrel to dunk your heads in, creating a seamless transition between the pool of water and candy-stimulated saliva.

3. It’s only natural for adults to wonder: in an uncertain world, how can I regain a sense of normalcy? Still, precautions should be taken. If you’re having a party, it’s best to restrict it to a core group of trusted friends. Meet outdoors, staying six to ten feet apart, masked, for about twenty minutes to minimize risk of contagious disease.

   If all these new procedures cause you stress, that’s completely normal. Our team recommends letting loose in the best possible way: find a street corner and start apple bobbing with strangers in your beautiful new apple bobbing barrel, with a freshly stocked selection of apples, a sense of competition, and readiness to have a rollicking good time!

Thanks again to the Institute for Apple Bobbing for supporting our extensive studies on making Halloween fun and safe.

Though our study was cut short by oddly frequent disease transmission, and two drownings, this I.A.B. grant helped make our research possible.

From the Lab

Consider this forwarding prompt our trick or treat. If you don’t forward this email, we will “trick” your employer into believing you embezzled $2,500 last April.

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New Sleep Studies You Can Join

Here at the Fake Science Labs, we have an active sleep study program. Though we can’t afford to offer participants thousands of dollars, we can guarantee fours of dollars ($12 is most common). Each study is overseen by Reginald, an expressionless yet still-nervous bald man who likes to watch you sleep.

1. The first study requires you to sleep on a hard wooden board until we buy a bed. We’re studying how long it takes us to get the courage to go to the mattress store. Those salespeople can be so pushy!

2. Is it possible to function on as little as four hours of sleep a night? We’ll find out by waking you every other second from bedtime to 6 AM.

3. In the consumer world, body pillows are all the rage, since a lot of bodies get donated to science. So you’re going to hug what’s left of Eunice tonight and tell us how it made you feel.

From the Lab

Thanks for reading. As your read this prompt, you find yourself getting sleepier and sleepier. Your eyelids grow heavier than ever before, and not just because of that new lead-based mascara you’re wearing. Your whole body feels warm, as if it were a baking pot pie. Consciousness drifts. You click to forward this email to thirty acquaintances.

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T-Rex Fact and Fiction

Fact!

The Tyrannosaurus had a life span of around 30 years.

Fiction!

Dolores crossed the room, her aubergine skirt catching the light of a fading sun. She still remembered the first time they’d come back to this room, to have coffee in the late afternoon.

“Graham, I want to talk.”

He put the coffee cup down, after struggling for a few minutes because of his stubby arms. Graham knew what she was talking about, knew what she was going to say. He sighed and his head delicately burst through the ceiling.

People had always called their relationship improbable — two puzzle pieces that never fit together, two paths that were never meant to cross. And yet when she touched his scales with the back of her hand, he never wanted to eat her whole. He just wanted to be with her. But now wasn’t the time to reminisce, it was the time to get over her, to let the sunlight fade into the darkness of a long night.

“ROAOAOOROOOROOAOOROOOROOROOROOOROOAOOORRROOROAOROOOROROROROROOROOROAROOORORORRRROOOOOROROOROAOROROOROOROROOROAORORRRR,” Graham whispered.

From the Lab

Thanks for reading. Send this to a carnivore.

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Big upgrades at the lab

Today, we’re giving you a peek inside the Fake Science Laboratories’ IT department (distinct from the “It” department, which is still the working name for our lion/bunsen burner hybrid).

As science becomes more technically demanding, it’s become more important that our tech be up to snuff. Recent upgrades in the lab have gotten us there, though we needed an additional computer to keep track of snuff positions (currently, we are .086 degrees above snuff after 38 months about 3.2 degrees sub-snuff).

The first key upgrade was internet connectivity, since it’s a crucial way for scientists to learn how lonely they are compared to everyone else. That loneliness makes them want to work harder to avoid social pain. In one months of improved connectivity, 12% of our lab techs stopped leaving the office for fear of having no good pictures to put on Instagram.

Of course, processing power is a key metric too, since our scientists perform incredibly complex calculations. Our grant by the Institute for Abacus Studies (sponsored by Ab-Corp, the largest abacus manufacturer in the world) prevents us from using non-abacus calculations in the lab. However, we are allowed to increase abacus-size, so now we have a football-field sized abacus with beads so large they pose a hazard to children. In just a few months, we should have conclusive data on 12*8.

Finally, due to a second grant from the United States Department of Homophones, we’ve replaced all our computer mice with actual mice. An advanced bio-electric graft between their tails and computer cords is still, according to official reports, “not at all working,” but it’s one of the cuter forms of torture and, in an ideal world, might make our lab techs’ Instagrams slightly less depressing.

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New Frontiers in Twin-speriments

Honestly, our greatest interest — no, twinterest — in twins is combining the word twin with other words. It helps with the fact that everything in the world has gone twinsane.

However, twins also provide a unique twinportunity to see how highly similar people respond to experiments. These so called “twin studies” combine scientific precision with a nice Wes Anderson aesthetic.

• In one twin study, each twin was given a different food to eat. For example, we gave Harold a stick of butter and Derek a stick of dynamite. Even though the butter was higher in fat, Harold died a full 59 years after Derek ate the dynamite.

• Can twins pass information through an extrasensory mechanism? We experimented with this by keeping two twins imprisoned in adjacent rooms for decades. When they both die, we’ll be able to release our results.

• Identical twins: are they truly identical? We switched Gary and Larry Maxwell’s identities every day for a month, and they both sued our lab for the exact same amount. Twincredible!

From the Lab

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Scientifically solving the “fall” or “autumn” problem

For thousands of years, men, women, and pets have debated whether it’s “fall” or “autumn.” Initial attempts at compromise, like “Falltumn,” failed completely. And, if you think about it, both names are entirely too poetic for a weather change that should have scientific dignity.

For that reason, we’re suggesting one of the following names instead, along with a slogan.

• Pre-Winter: The Whithering Begins

• Pumpkin Fondling Season

• The Time When You Go Back to School Unless There Is No School Anymore Because Civilization Has Been Revealed To Be Just An Illusion That Can Be Shattered Within A Few Short Months, And Now You Will Only Learn Inside A Small Room While Staring At A Screen

• Apple Bobbing Time!: Submit To The Inevitable

From the Lab

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Our big breakthroughs in genetic imagineering

Since we learned we were about 40 years late to the party on genetic engineering, in 2016 we established a new department: Genetic Imagineering.

Unconstrained by tradition or a fundamental knowledge of DNA, our scientists began altering genetic code with a mixture of whimsy and button mashing. In just a few months, our lab was covered with the carcasses of our experiments.

There were, however, survivors, including:

• The Catamaran: A cross between a common house-cat and a maran, a breed of chicken, the catamaran hates you and clucks at you in equal measure. Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste like chicken.

• Alligator Special Edition: This alligator was given human cognition abilities after being injected with a large beaker of “Brain Juice” we found in the janitor’s closet. Though the alligator still can’t perform most basic reasoning tasks, it is deeply ashamed of all the brain juice that keeps leaking from its eyes.

• DogPeach: We’re not going to sugarcoat this one, because it tastes terrible when coated with sugar. The dogpeach is full of hair and teeth and it’s never ripe. It also goes to the bathroom when you take it for rolls around the block.

• Baby Gillsalot: Yes, we crossed a baby and a guppie. We don’t want to talk about it. We ruined a perfectly good guppie.

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Launching the SpaceY program

Over the past few months, the SpaceX program has brought a glimmer of hope for space-obsessives during a difficult time in human history. We’re enraged about it.

That’s because the Fake Science Labs have been working, in parallel, on the SpaceY program. Though it initially began as a sentence (Space? Why?), we realized that lots of billionaires were enthusiastic about rockets because, in their words, “rockets go boom.” So we picked up a new funding source and new passion for blowing things up intentionally.

Early experiments focused on getting a new crew in space to conduct experiments on plants, animals, and other biological systems. To do so, we created a nearly silent, almost invisible rocket that was able to practically float to the outer reaches of human contact. This quickly ended when one of our billionaire funders, videoconferencing in from his third vacation home in Ibiza, noted a big problem: “Rocket no boom? Where boom? Me want boom!”

Our SpaceY resources were redirected to booming innovation. We were determined make the loudest boom possible. It quickly became clear that reaching space caused an immediate decrease in booming volume, so that was eliminated. Even the upward direction of a rocket could limit booming. Our scientists innovated and returned to the origination of the project: Space? Why? It doesn’t make the boom bigger.

Today, the program is a huge success at making big booms, even though the “Space” part is somewhat superfluous. We debuted our most recent rocket, the SpaceY Thud to thunderous applause (its launch was broadcast to a giant drone-held TV hovering above a flotilla of billionaire yachts). While the rocket didn’t go up in the air, reach space, or survive the first 30 seconds, one Australian plutocrat put the collective reaction best, in between hefty bites of koala jerky: “Big boom. Me like boom. Take money now!”

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The new frontier of animal training

In Wyoming, where the Fake Science Laboratories maintain a modest 33,000 acre laboratory, we focus on an essential course of study: is it possible to train animals to train other animals, so we can take some time off and begin a journey of self-discovery?

We started by assigning the task to some of our most competent chimpanzees, but they demanded a fair wage, so we moved on to the interns. Unfortunately, it turns out the interns are technically human, even though they live in cages and wear leashes.

On to the dogs!

Our dog corps of scientists has always worn really cute lab coats, sewn directly into their fur at great expense. It seemed like a good start. We asked one of our most intelligent dogs, Fido, to train a moderately intelligent dog to sit. Once we redefined the mission and asked Fido to train the moderately intelligent dog to “do whatever he wanted and occasionally lick himself,” it was a huge success!

So what’s next in the lab? We read on Wikipedia that elephants are really smart and have elephant graveyards, so we’ve sent three Asian Elephants to a local funeral home to greet mourners.

When it comes to animal training, the sky is the limit, and actually it isn’t the limit at all — we sent seven cats beyond the sky, to outer space to become Astrocats. They’ll hopefully discover a fuel source that can bring their spaceship back to earth.

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Lessons For The Kids

Lately, you may find yourself having more time than ever with the kids at home, lurking, refusing to go to their school just because it’s “officially closed.” Fortunately, the Fake Science labs have been creating at-home lessons for years in an attempt to educate gerbils advanced enough to replace 40% of our workforce.

Most of the gerbils ended up majoring in English, but we did have some success at the elementary school level with the following lessons:

• How strong can you make a bridge out of popsicle sticks alone? Nobody knows, but your children will grow fat and sleepy eating enough popsicles to learn.

• Just because you’re teaching at home doesn’t mean you can’t borrow a trick or two from trained educators, like watching a movie for a week and a half.

• Who hasn’t seen a microscope and thought, why not just stare at something really big, through a cup that you call a normalscope? This will be your 1:15-2:00 PM lesson, every day.

• Observing our world is as important as reading about it in a textbook. What can you child discover about physics, biology, and chemistry while working in the small but profitable telemarketing phone bank you’ve set up in your foyer?

• What if the Periodic Table became an actual table in your living room? This fun idea is a great excuse for all the chemicals you have spread out in your dining room, and it also explains why your children are occupied examining powder and putting it into small plastic baggies.

From the Lab

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